The family is actually relaxing in front of the TV this evening (watching Vegi-Tales). We have just finished cleaning up from David's Birthday party this afternoon (Sunday). Preparation actually began in earnest on Friday as we were blessed with a long weekend (national Holiday). The party planned for Sunday was a week ahead of David's real Birthday but I was not supposed to be in town for it next week.
Despite the fact that it is still early for Halloween, we did decide to make it a costume party, so preparation meant, not just baking a cake and decorating the house, but also constructing costumes (as there are none commercially available here.)
It is kind of fun, if one has the time, to do everything oneself, and that was the case this weekend. All of us took part. Rebecca made 2 cakes--(a brownie one decorated as a ladybug and a bundt cake that was decorated as a millipede). Oren made a picture of an elaborately decorated 23 layer cake on which the kids played a game called 'pin the candle onto the cake. (The idea was to hit a particular layer). My contribution was dinosaur masks for the kids and a piniata. Rebecca also contributed to the costumes helping Oren design a stegasaurus spiny back and tail to go with the mask. Oren was very excited to help on every project and from time to time he was actually a help.
Saturday we did take the afternoon off to go to Entente Sportive for a swim. This is Oren's preference these days as he now loves to jump off the 3 meter platform about 30 times every time we go. He was very excited to see that his 'friend' was there. This was a kid who would count for him before jumping and would jump with him on the adjacent platform. Weighing at what I would guess was about 250 pounds, he made quite an impressive splash every time he jumped off the board.
We were going to get food out for dinner but discovered that we did not bring enough money so we stopped at a boucherie and bought hamburger meat and had burgers and salad that night while watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It was a nice family evening together and David and I actually got through half the movie before falling asleep.
Sunday was quite a change of pace from the relaxing two days preceding. The morning was complicated as we had to pick up someone at the airport at 8am, then Rebecca was preaching at church at 9. We decided to send Rebecca for the pick up so she could have some quiet time while I dealt with the kids and brought them when church started. It all worked out well and we were all at the church by 9:10.
Rebecca preached on Acts 6. The passage about appointing deacons to resolve an ethnic conflict in the early church. (Between Greek and Hebrew widows.) She made some excellent point about leadership:
1) Leaders recognized their limitations and stayed faithful to their call
2) Leaders gathered the assembly to acknowledge and address the conflict and built consensus
3) Leaders came up with a solution but then handed power over the the assembly to choose the delegates to resolve it.
The involvement of everyone and the humility of the leadership were important lessons here where participation is not always encouraged and leaders, even in the church can be quite autocratic.
She also reminded us that most church settings these days in the West and here are monocultural, and that we have both a privilege and responsibility in participating in a multicultural church. But practically speaking, conflict will arise even as we try to love each other.
(She gave an example of a day when a meeting was scheduled from 11am to 4pm. She came at 11:30 knowing it would not start on time. But it was raining and what she did not know was that normally here, when it rains, all activity is postponed until after the rain, then everyone picks up where they left off. She waited for the meeting to begin for about 2 and a half hours. When they did meet she stayed until 4:30 but then had to leave having been gone from home all day. As she was heading out, one of the leaders who was just arriving passed her on the steps and said in surprise: "You're leaving already?)
Rebecca told it in a humorous way and everyone in the congregation, Burundian and foreign, laughed out loud, but the point was well made. It is hard to connect culturally when our different perceptions and responsibilities sometimes permit us to only meet each other in brief passings coming and going. (She suggested that probably Greek and Hebrew widows had very different needs and lack of sensitivity to that might have contributed to the conflict.)
Her final challenge was for the congregation to recognize that when the leadership asks us to take responsibility that we do so. It is not right to expect that a small minority do all the work that is required to build a loving community.
The sermon was well received by all who heard it. I was able to enjoy about half of it before David's restlessness required me to take him out of the service.
After church Rebecca was obliged to stay for a committee meeting while I took the kids and our guest. Violette (who is here to teach at GLPI) home. Rebecca got home an hour later and we began the frantic last minute house cleaning and preparations for the Birthday.We invited families with some very young children. this included Scott and Danika with their 2 young sons (link to their blog here). They are a new mission family with Food for the Hungry. We also invited Kirsten with her daughters Emily and Rebecca as well as Ann Glick and her husband with their 2 boys and Tim and Jeanette with their daughter Isabel.
We did have plenty of activities starting with a parachute that someone gave us this summer that the kids loved to run under. We also had a costume parade, played pin the candle on the cake, opened presents, ate cake and knocked down the piniata. It was a good Birthday for David as you can see in the pictures in this blog.
The week preceding was one with several trials. The first was the continued lack of power which lasted until Friday. After a couple days without any power, our back-up system cannot keep up with demand, especially since it rained Monday- Wednesday which meant there was no solar power to help charge the battery.
We spent several nights in the dark which makes many things difficult in terms of getting the kids to bed. We also had to provide the dogs with a feast of all the left-overs we had not used in the refrigerator which once again served only as cabinet storage space.
But as far as our neighborhood, when I was complaining to my gardener about the lack of power he told me that if I looked outside at the transformer for the neighborhood, I could see that it was open and all the fuses were stolen. Sure enough he was right. We alerted the power company who was aware of this and said they were planning to fix it the next day. Amazingly they actually did come the next day.
They told Rebecca that this problem of fuse theft is growing and in fact this was the second time in 2 weeks that all of these fuses were stolen. (They welded a metal plate onto the transformer making access at this time impossible.) That should keep the theives out as well as anyone who may need to repair it in the future.
Activites parascholaires (extracurricular activities) have been in force this month and I taught my first ballet class for little kids this Wednesday. Sadly interest this year has dropped of significantly with the change in date to Wednesday (not my choice.) Particularly the class of the older more advanced girls had to be cancelled because I only had 1 student. (I am thinking of adding an adult class in its place.)
We continue to have many guests pass through. Jodi was with us for lunch on Wednesday and I mentioned Violette who was with us on Sunday on her way to GLPI. We also had Yolanda pass through last night as well.
Generally our family has been healthy but one of our staff had a very sick baby suffering with severe diarrhea. The mother took him to a local clinic seriously dehydrated first thing in the morning. The nurse told her she would have to wait at least until 3 in the afternoon and to take the child home and come back later. Fortunately our worker let us know and we sent him immediately to a less busy (more expensive) clinic where they started an IV (with difficulty) soon after they arrived. Again another poignant reminder of the healthcare system here and the lack of access to those without resources--eventhough it is austensibly free for children. If our worker had not had the means (through us) to pay for a better clinic, I fear the child, in severe dehydration, would not have survived until he could have been seen by a doctor. Please pray for continued healing of this child as he is not well yet and still has the diarrhea although he is receiving treatment.
**update on the situation: Rebecca went to the clinic today to see the child. He had not received any tests yet (waiting for payment). When Rebecca showed up the treatment for the child took on a new seriousness. Apparently if it is true there that if a rich mzungu takes an interest in an individual their chances of getting necessary life-saving diagnoses and treatment improves greatly--a sad truth that has been our experiences in other health crises as well.
This morning (Monday) I am off to Mutaho to visit the Hope School and get some photos and interviews for reporting. Rebecca will be home with the kids. I will return on Tuesday.
Bonus Photo: David brandishing the scar on his forehead he got while playing with his dog Noel. Looks a bit like Harry Potter, but the hair is Draco Malfoy.
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